Dogecoin today reclaimed its place as the top “meme coin”—surging 30% in 24 hours—after briefly losing the throne to Shiba Inu yesterday.
DOGE’s sudden price uptick means it is now trading for $0.31, making it the ninth biggest cryptocurrency by market cap.
Shiba Inu, or SHIB, an Ethereum-based token also based on a dog meme, is right now trading for $0.00007276. It is the 10th largest cryptocurrency by market cap.
Yesterday, Shiba Inu nabbed the ninth spot, overtaking DOGE, but lost the place today. It is still up 10% in the past 24 hours and 149% in the past week.
Dogecoin is a popular cryptocurrency, despite being created as a joke in 2013. Its price has gone through the roof mainly because billionaire businessmen like Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Shark Tank investor Mark Cuban have pumped the coin’s price on social media and claimed that it will become a useful cryptocurrency.
Right now, Dogecoin isn’t a particularly useful cryptocurrency, though merchants such as Cuban’s Dallas Mavericks have begun to accept it as payment.
Both Cuban and Musk have said they believe in the coin’s future potential, with Cuban going as far as to call it the “strongest cryptocurrency” around. Dogecoin even has its own foundation working to turn the asset into a fully-functioning and globally-accepted payment method. The Dogecoin Foundation’s advisory board includes Ethereum co-founder, Vitalin Buterin, and a representative for Elon Musk, Jared Birchall.
Shibu Inu is a token that runs on the Ethereum network. Its price has also gone through the roof: in the past year, it has skyrocketed over 90,000,000%.
Both are meme coins—cryptocurrencies based on internet memes, current events, online communities and influencers. These types of coins can be highly volatile, even more so than traditional cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum.
For early investors, however, the gains have been massive. Had Vitalik Buterin not “burned” (i.e. destroyed) the 505 trillion SHIB he was gifted in May, he’d be $32.5 billion richer today.
